Why China Loves 'Gossip Girl'

I'd traded in the Upper East Side for the Far East and lived in China for all of three months when I met Angela. A waiflike college student, she was volunteering at a gallery of Communist propaganda posters located in the bowels of a Shanghai apartment complex. As I peered at flattering and fantastical representations of Chairman Mao, she offered to explain their meaning. Small talk commenced, and I told her I was a New Yorker.

Her eyes lit up. "Like on Gossip Girl?"

Well, yes. When I explained that I attended Chapin, an all-girls private school mentioned in a few episodes, Angela peppered me with questions about the show, which chronicles the sex, shopping and drama-filled lives of a clique of snobby prep school students.

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan. So I was happy to oblige. Yes, we wore short plaid skirts. No, we didn't host alcohol-laced ragers in the school pool at midnight. (At least, I wasn't invited.) It was only weeks later that I wondered what the allure of the show was for a soft-spoken Chinese girl who rarely visits bars and spends much of her week studying. So I called her up.

"We Chinese people are very curious about something happening in New York, because we know that New York is something interesting and dynamic," said Angela, who is 21. "The girls and the boys are our age, and we like to see what they do."

Angela's not alone. Between 3 million and 5 million people watch each new episode of Gossip Girl, according to the China Market Research Group. The show isn't broadcast on China's strictly regulated networks, so fans watch illegally, streaming or downloading episodes from the Internet. And while an audience of a few million may be a pittance in a nation of 1.3 billion, there's evidence that the show is catching on.

Last fall American fashion designer Anna Sui, who created a line of clothes for
Target
inspired by and named after the show's main characters, traveled through China to promote a new perfume. Along the way, hordes of fans dogged her with questions about opaque Gossip Girl references they strove to understand: "Where is Williamsburg?" and "What is 'uptown'?"

Clubbing, bar-hopping and karaoke are familiar activities for Chinese viewers--even if many don't partake themselves. According to Angela, many students focus so intensely on their studies that they don't have time for the glamour and melodrama that occupies so much of the Gossip Girl characters' time.

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"They have many balls where they wear beautiful, lovely clothes. They go everywhere by limo. And then they will have a lot of banquets," she says. (Angela is matter-of-fact, not wistful.) "In China, even in Shanghai, very few students go to pubs during their spare time ... all we do is just homework. And we get up at 5 o'clock and we go to bed at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m."

Satellite TV and the Internet is enabling entertainment made around the world to be seen in China's rural and mountain areas, says Anthony Fung, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's school of journalism and communication. "That actually influences their expectations, and the fantasies of those people ... they can get a taste of the globalized world."

Angela acknowledges the show's didactic appeal. "We all look at TV series so that we can learn," she says. "To see movies, to go to pubs--their free time and how they spend it is so much more colorful and so much more dynamic that how we Chinese people do."

A copycat Chinese series--loosely based on the Gossip Girl characters but set in the People's Republic--is in the works. But it would be a mistake to believe the Chinese worship at the altar of Western culture, says Junhao Hong, author of The Internationalization of Television in China.

"The young people may not make so much money, but their lifestyles are very, very up-to-date," says Hong, a professor of communications at the State University of New York at Buffalo and research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. "They prefer to watch light programming, meaning less politics and more lifestyle, just for fun and for relaxation."

Talking to Angela, I can't help but think that her fandom runs deeper. True, her lifestyle stands in stark contrast to those depicted on the show. There's less partying, more homework. She is majoring in business administration, in part because an online aptitude test said it would suit her personality, and in part because passing the exam to be an accountant is prestigious and locks in a good salary. Angela aspires to study abroad, to leave Shanghai, to live in Europe and America.

But she is also naïve. Blair Waldorf, the Gossip Girl queen bee who lost her virginity to a young tycoon in the back of a limo, is her favorite character; words Angela used to describe Blair were "smart," "determined," "devoted," "typical," "clean." Clean? Maybe she wants to see more of herself in Blair than even she knows; maybe entertainment that is done right fosters self-identification where there shouldn't be any.

In the broader Chinese community's reception of Gossip Girl, there are a few standard reactions. Bewilderment is one of them. Awe, another. Much fawning over brands, accessories and hairdos. Occasionally envy. Most of all, there is an acute awareness of difference.

One Chinese commenter, posting on the Internet under the handle Lengfeng, wrote: "My friends who watch [Gossip Girl] all said Americans are so premature. High school students can wear heavy makeup, boots, drink champagne and play with high-tech mobile phones. They also have passionate complicated romances and love affairs. Then we can't help thinking of our own high school lives: old-fashioned campus uniforms, endless exams, thick eyeglasses and secret underground love. We love [Gossip Girl] but feel confused or lost about our own lives."

Chinese viewers may admire the glamour of their Upper East Side counterparts. But that doesn't mean they feel inferior. Concludes Lengfeng: "For most Chinese, this show is like Vogue magazine, and full of gentle cultural propaganda, which Americans are good at."

Jennifer Cheung contributed reporting for this story.

For more about education and culture, and Forbes' list of America's Best Colleges, click here.